Frog:
We both tried here. We can give ourselves credit for that and move on. For reasons having nothing to do with this exchange or anything else having to do with the blog, I won't be commenting much if at all for a few weeks. So I want my temporary leave to be smooth. I hope things go well for the Yanks and that this month in particular turns out to be a healing time for all New Yorkers.

Okay. But first, let's face facts. If you disagree with Sullivan, you're also going to disagree with me. You've read all the arguments and you've been made aware of all the costs and all the corruption that spawned from not just the Iraq war but the Afghanistan war, and yet, because you believe the way you do about war and its ability to prevent what you think it can prevent, you will continue to believe what you believe. So trying to change your mind will almost certainly fail. The only reason I'm doing this is because you asked me to, and because I'm okay with failure as long as its creative. In my opinion, anyone with any sense at all should now recognize that any (at best limited) success that has come of the wars, like the one you mention, could have been accomplished by much more peaceful means. Certainly, none of the successes that the US public was promised in exchange for its money and lives have been achieved. And since you have asked me to try and do this, I will take a chance at something. I wouldn't normally go there, but because I think you can hear this from me and not think of it as anything remotely close to anything anti-semitic, I will tell you that I think if you lived anywhere but New York, and were of a different racial descent, you would feel differently. Of course, there are New-York Jews who think the way you do, but personally, I know no one who is as smart as you are that still thinks the way you do at this point. They all see failure. If after all the failure, you still see success, there's no argument left that will sway you. All I can tell you is that I think you should try to open your mind to Sullivan's point about how "It’s time we (all) fessed up: the madmen of 9/11 were not the Soviets; they were not the Nazis. If we had seen them in that calm perspective a decade ago, we would be living in a very different America today."
If the madmen of 9/11 had been anything more than what they were, we would know that by now. The "logical" thing to do, even from what I think of as your perspective (not mine), would have been to wait and really find out who the enemy really was. At this point, it should be obvious to everyone, not just liberals, or pacifists like me, that in this case, since we were not dealing with anything more than a small group of madmen incapable of doing anything more than what they already did, that we flew off the handle and drove ourselves into the ground economically just as bin Laden predicted. They were not the Nazis. They were more like Breivik and MacVeigh--not exactly--but enough like them to be handled the way they were handled. Bin Laden could have killed the same way he was killed. In fact, it would have been easier to take care of it like the mobsters we really are and execute a hit on him instead of a war on "all terrorists" that will never end and will still possibly take the whole world down. We played right into a unworthy little gang's hands and at a minimum, after 10 years, if you can't figure out your own version of a response that would be at least a lot more logical and a lot more successful then what happened, then, again, I see no way to reason with you. My creative sense tells me that shortly, the cost will be even more obvious than it is now. I predict that in 5 more years, even people who think the way you do now will begin to realize what the continuation of the Afghanistan war has done to our society in relation to how many veterans are back home causing a level of violence here that at first will be exploding inside homes as domestic violence but will eventually spill out all over our streets, chemically fueled by the new habit that damaged young people have of combining red-bull and alcohol. Obviously, that last part is just speculation. I mention only because I see your position as partly just a failure of creativity. Prove me wrong on that point by telling me what you envision happening and establishing itself 5 years from now as a result of what you see as a successful war.

@ fuster:
Wrong and then some, Frog. "The cost of Afghanistan wasn't excessive" statement reveals a deeply rooted sense of denial that can no more be mitigated by reason than many of Migg's and George's most ridiculous claims. I have admired the patience and persistence that you have shown them, but I can't muster the same for you on this point. Partly, because you should clearly know better all on your own. You're capable.